Netanyahu's attempt to give the government the right to water down the bill fails.

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee voted Wednesday [June 27, 2018] to advance a bill aimed at stopping the Palestinian Authority from giving terrorists and their families 1.2 billion shekels a year in monthly stipends, despite an attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to water down the bill.

The legislation is now expected to pass into law next Monday. It requires the government to deduct the amount the PA pays terrorists from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects for the authority.

The bill had already passed in committee three weeks ago, but then coalition chairman David Amsalem requested revisions on Netanyahu’s behalf. Netanyahu wanted the security cabinet to be able to bypass the bill and pay the PA at its own discretion based on diplomatic and other considerations.

But after it became clear that there was no majority in the committee for that change, the only revision requested was to freeze the money conf iscated from the PA, rather than use it to create a fund for terror victims to pursue court judgments against the PA, in which they could obtain a creditor’s lien on the PA’s funds. That change, which passed by a nine to one vote, was requested to help the bill comply with international law.

“Passing the bill into law on Monday will send a message that Israel will no longer be a pipeline for transferring money to terrorists,” said committee chairman Avi Dichter (Likud), who co-sponsored the bill with MK Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid). […]

Dichter, who was in Washington last week, told the committee that Congress voted to freeze money it gives to the PA, implementing the Taylor Force bill passed in Congress, named after an American student and US army veteran who was murdered by a terrorist in Tel Aviv. Dichter said he had an emotional meeting in Washington with Stuart Force, Taylor’s father, whom he invited to come to Israel for the first time.

The bill was supposed to pass into law this week, but it was postponed at Amsalem’s request on Netanyahu’s behalf.

Representatives of Palestinian Media Watch told the committee that during the week in which the legislation was postponed, the amount the PA gave terrorists and their families was more than 23 million shekels.